General News

The Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women is launching a statewide awareness campaign to call attention to domestic violence in the state.
The effort is called “Live Violence Free,” and it uses a flag as a symbol of the effort to reduce violence in our communities.

Liz Richards is the Executive Director of the Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women. She stopped by KFAI and talked with Yvette Howie, who asked how the flag campaign works.

Organizers of a planned Saturday protest at the Mall of America — part of the national Black Lives Matter movement — say they were visited by a courier acting on behalf of mall management last Friday, and again by City of Bloomington Police on Tuesday, in an attempt to stop their event from happening.

Sometimes what you planned as a one-time event becomes something much more.

Abdul “Duke” Fakir, Levi Stubbs, Lawrence Payton and Renaldo “Obie” Benson sang together at a friend’s birthday party for the first time in 1954. They enjoyed it so much that they decided that night to start a group, first named “The Four Aims” and later changed to the “Four Tops”.

The Four Tops helped shaped the sound of Motown and brought joy to the hearts of many with songs like “Sugar Pie Honey Bunch”, and “Reach Out I’ll Be There”.

On February 23rd, one of the group’s founding members, Abdul Fakir, was honored with the Living Legend award by St. Peter’s AME Church in South Minneapolis.

KFAI’s Jumondeh Tweh was there, and he talked with “Duke” Fakir about the group’s great history and classic songs.

KFAI will present “For Pete’s Sake”, a celebration of the life and work of musician and activist Pete Seeger, as a holiday-brightening opener on Labor Day morning from 6 to 8 am. This re-broadcast is appropriately timed because Seeger was a lifelong supporter of organized labor and union causes.

Young people who have been in and out of the foster care system too often wind up homeless, or in prison, or in a situation where there is no security and they don’t know where their next meal is coming from. Their life stories are often overlooked.

On the evening of April 12 in St. Paul, a group of performers will get a chance to tell those stories in a theatrical piece called “Fostering Voice”.

The Ebola outbreak in Liberia, Sierre Leone, and other West African countries is causing a regional public health emergency as health-care workers, families, and others attempt to provide care and supplies.

Minnesota has the largest Liberian immigrant population in the United States, and last month members of Minnesota’s Liberian Immigrant and Refugee community held a meeting with representatives of Minnesota’s Department of Health to discuss some of their concerns.

The Chicago office of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has announced the launch of “My Jihad”. It’s an educational initiative that seeks to share the proper meaning of jihad as it is believed and practiced by the majority of Muslims around the world.

Natalie Warren is part of an 11 person expedition paddling the length of the Mississippi River. We check in with her on Wednesday mornings on The Morning Blend. She and her crew expect to arrive in New Orleans in late November or early December.
You can follow the trip online at Paddle 4 ward dot com.